


Below Zero

by Calais_Reno



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Antarctica, Don’t copy to another site, Falling In Love, Heavy Angst, Hopeful Ending, Loneliness, Love, M/M, Pandemics, Space Stations
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-30 06:26:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20092750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Calais_Reno/pseuds/Calais_Reno
Summary: 10,000 miles south of London, John Watson sits in a research station in Antarctica.210 miles above London, Sherlock Holmes is floating in a space station.They are Earth’s only survivors.





	1. Alone

**Author's Note:**

> This is sad, but I hope the ending will redeem it.

10,000 miles south of London, a man sits in a research station in Antarctica. His team is taking core samples and studying the composition of the ice they pull up from the depths in hollow tubes. They want to know about the past of the planet, see what weather patterns show up in the layers, hoping to predict how the environment will change in the next decades. He is a doctor, and his name is John Watson.

210 miles above London, a man is floating in a space station. He is running several experiments. One is looking for dark matter, an attempt to learn more about the origins of the universe; another is analysing the effects of zero gravity on sleep patterns; a third experiment looks at how plants can be grown aboard a ship to produce food for long space flights. He is a scientist, and his name is Sherlock Holmes.

John is friendly with his two teammates, Adam Becker and Ken Saito. Adam is American, and Ken grew up in Japan, now lives in Sydney. They have been at the station for over four hundred days and have another two hundred to go. They frequently talk to family at home, celebrate birthdays and holidays with supplies that have been flown in. On John’s birthday he talks to his wife and daughter in London. Adam and Ken have made a small, lopsided cake in the propane oven which doubles as a heater. They open bottles of soft drink which have been provided by a sponsor.

“How’s the weather down there?” his wife asks him.

He laughs. “Today it was warm. The temperature got up to twenty below zero.”

He and his teammates know that they are heading into Antarctic winter, where the sun will barely show itself for weeks, just as London begins warming for the summer.

That night, Adam is ill. He repeatedly vomits, and when his stomach is empty, he is hot and shivering cold.

“Was it something he ate?” Ken asks.

Watson, the doctor, doesn’t know. Food poisoning would be rare in this environment, where all foods are stored below zero, cooked and consumed by all three of them. “It’ll pass,” he tells Ken.

Sherlock is alone, and has been for over four months. The mission was originally scheduled to take two astronauts into space, but several backers pulled out, and budget cuts had to be made. He doesn’t mind being alone. Most of his life he has spent working in labs by himself. The society of other people is something he has easily lived without. Even as a boy, he made few friends. His IQ puts him in the ranks of genius; he has a mild form of Asperger’s Syndrome, not enough to disqualify him from the space program. He likes his tiny home in space because there are no people to bother him.

His station maintains in a polar orbit. The Chinese are using it to map changes in the ice caps. All things considered, the orbit makes a more interesting view. In a day, he passes over most of the Earth. He likes looking at Antarctica; maybe someday all the ice will be gone and plants will grow there. By then, he thinks, people will be gone.

He eats processed, packaged foods, drinks from pouches. This is fine because he doesn’t care much about eating, doesn’t miss any of it. He drinks tea, eats crackers, dehydrated fruit, noodle soup, and peanut butter. He gave up smoking before qualifying for the astronaut program. His birthday comes and goes without communication to or from his family. His father is dead, his mother is retired in Sussex. His brother lives in London, working for the British government. They aren’t a close family, but Sherlock isn’t lonely. He doesn’t miss them.

His brother contacts him a few days later to tell him their mother is ill. “Influenza,” Mycroft says. It’s an ordinary thing, the flu, and a rare year when a new strain does not appear. “She’ll be fine.”

Still, he sounds uneasy, and Sherlock wonders what has made his brother worry.

In the morning, Adam is dead. John checks him over and can only conclude that Ken was right about the food poisoning. He and Ken go over what they ate, in what amounts. They can draw no conclusions.

John radios Sydney and tells them that they’ve lost Adam. They will store his body in the unheated shed until someone can come and get him. Sydney tells them that they will send a supply plane before winter sets in.

Ken and John fold Adam’s arms over his chest and wrap his body in a tarp, just for the sake of dignity. There isn’t much dignity in this unforgiving environment. It’s almost like another planet— no plants, no dirt, only miles of whiteness surrounded by a dark sea. When he looks up at the sky, John can imagine himself out in space, on a distant planet.

They drag Adam’s body outside and into the shed. For a few minutes, they stand and look at him, lying there wrapped like a mummy. Neither of them is religious, but there is an unspoken feeling that something ought to happen before they return to their shelter.

“Goodbye, Adam,” John says at last. “We’ll miss you.”

Mycroft contacts his brother the following day to break the news to him: Mummy has died. It is an unusually virulent strain of influenza, medical officials are saying, one affecting both young and old. Many people have fallen ill.

“When are you returning?” he asks his brother.

“In June a shuttle will pick me up and a new team will board. By then I will have gathered all the data from my experiments.”

“That’s good,” Mycroft replies. “This thing should run its course by then.”

They end the call. Sherlock straps himself in to sleep for a few hours. There is no day or night in space, which suits him.

He thinks about his mother being dead. There is no evidence of an afterlife, a heaven or a hell. When people die, their brains just stop. They don’t know they’re dead, so they can’t be sad or feel anything else. It’s the people who are still living that feel their death.

This is what he believes. It makes sense in the context of the science he understands, but he often thinks about all that he doesn’t understand. He won’t know for certain until he dies. And even then, maybe not.

He wonders what Mummy was thinking about as she lay there, knowing she was dying. Maybe she thought of him, two hundred miles up in space, like a tiny star in the sky. Maybe she thought she would see his father again, and that one day he and his brother would join them.

He remembers being a small boy, having a tantrum when his dog died. He understood that Redbeard was not coming back. But he was angry and sad. The anger didn’t last long, he remembered. The sadness never left.

Ken is sick, and John is worried. He has radioed Sydney and was told that there is a flu epidemic that is making it hard to get a plane ready to bring them their last supplies before winter. Food, medicine, fuel. They cannot survive without these.

“What are the numbers?” he asks. “How many people are sick?”

“A lot,” is the imprecise answer he receives. So many people are ill, it’s hard to get accurate numbers, he’s told.

This is worrying. He knows that biological weapons can be engineered, but it doesn’t seem likely that any world power would risk it. The world has lived with nuclear weapons for years without destroying itself. A virus is different, though, from a ballistic weapon. All the world’s major powers can trace a nuclear weapon to its source. A bio-weapon would be much easier to disperse, harder to trace. All you would have to do is release it in an airport, and travellers would carry the contagion to all corners of the world. Or you could put it in the water supply.

_Even Antarctica?_ He wonders, thinks more about what they ate a few days ago. It was all food that had come in a few days earlier. They all ate the same things. Adam is dead, Ken is sick, and John is fine.

He listens to radio broadcasts, learns that there are few places where the killer bug has not brought death. His wife calls, tells him all the schools are closed, and people only go outside wearing face masks.

“Are you all right?” she asks him.

He reassures her, doesn’t tell her about Ken, who is unconscious now, breathing with difficulty. There is no point in letting her worry when there is nothing anyone can do.

In another week, things on Earth are looking grim. Mycroft calls him. It’s not influenza, he tells Sherlock. “Man-made,” he says. “A biologically engineered virus. A killing machine.”

“Viruses don’t kill off all their hosts,” he replies. “They mutate into something weaker, go dormant. That’s how they survive.”

“We see no sign that it is weakening.” Mycroft coughs.

“You’re not saying everything,” he protests. “Just tell me what you think.”

He hears his brother take a deep, rasping breath. “Extinction,” he says. “They are talking about over half the world’s population dying. In some places, entire cities have been nearly wiped out.”

“There will be survivors,” Sherlock insists. “Just make sure you’re one of them.”

If anyone survives, it will be Mycroft. Like a cockroach, he has the constitution to survive a holocaust, and could run Britain single-handedly, if necessary. Hell, he could run the entire planet. He knows logistics, understands how to negotiate with anyone, even terrorists, if that’s what this is.

“Is there any plan to bring you down early?” Mycroft asks.

He shrugs, even though Mycroft can’t see him. “What for? I have enough supplies to outlast this. They will bring me down when it’s safe.”

He wonders who _they_ will be, who will be left by the time this is over.

If it comes to that, he knows what he will do.

Ken is dead, and John wraps him, drags him to join Adam in the shed. He feels unfathomably alone when he says goodbye. He bundles up and goes into the supply room, gauging how much food and water he has left. Snow, of course, can be melted and boiled, but when the fuel is gone, everything will be over.

Four months, he decides. Maybe. Uncertainties are all he has now.

He tries calling his wife, but there is no answer. He hopes she isn’t dead.

He thinks of his little girl never growing up. To be born at a time when one human being can bring on the end of the world is unlucky, to say the least. Should he be sorry for bringing another life into such a world?

He studied epidemiology once, thought about a career investigating viruses. He knows that everyone won’t die. Hosts have to remain, or the virus itself goes extinct, and that is not how life works. Everything seeks survival, strives to pass on its genes. Species become extinct because of competition, climate, or food supply. It may very well be that humans will one day no longer exist, but that won’t happen yet.

He sits in his hut and wonders about what is happening. Antarctica is as always. It is a place where people don’t belong, and he is just hanging on to existence here by a thread. It’s funny, he thinks, that he never worried when Adam and Ken were here. The fact that there were three of them in this barren land meant that humans could survive here. Humans, always bringing life to extreme places where life wasn’t wanted. The highest mountains, the deepest ocean trenches, the hottest deserts, the coldest ice shelf. Places where people had died trying to prove that humans could exist anywhere on the planet.

He closes his eyes, sees the planet as if from space, silent, blue, wreathed in clouds.

_What will I return to, when the plane finally comes for me? _

_Who will there be to bring that plane?_

Sherlock is trying to reach his brother.

It’s hard to think about the possibility that Mycroft is dead. He has always seemed indestructible. Though he is older by seven years, somehow Sherlock has forgotten to think about him dying.

Now he is not answering his private cell phone. He has authorised calls from the Space Station, any hour of day or night. His failure to answer is ominous.

His vessel has enough water and food and air for four months, though he could stretch it to six, if he has to. At that point, the pandemic will have ended, and people will still be alive. They must be alive. He will keep radio contact with whomever he can, and let them know he must be brought back to Earth.

He scans the radio frequencies. There are fewer stations broadcasting now. Fewer amateur radios seeking anyone out there.

He seeks, hears only death tolls. The world’s governments are trying to contain this, but they cannot stop what some unknown terrorist has started.

The lights of Earth are going out, he can see through his tiny window. Entire areas are dark. For the first time in his life, he feels alone.

“Is anyone out there?” he finally asks.

John listens to the radio, hears only a few still broadcasting. Just a month ago, Adam and Ken were alive. They were celebrating John’s birthday, eating cake, drinking soft drinks.

Soft drinks are not something John enjoys. He prefers beer (which they cannot get ordinarily). He looks in the supply room, sees one bottle of cola remaining, and wonders. That was the only thing the three of them didn’t share. He refused his bottle, urged the others to enjoy.

_Dear God_, he thinks. What kind of terrorist would slip a virulent contagion into a soft drink enjoyed by billions?

A smart one. A ruthless one. People always think that if something comes sealed in a bottle, it’s safer than anything that might come out of a tap or drinking fountain.

Things are bad out there. He hears reports of hospitals overwhelmed with corpses, people bunkered in without hope, with limited supplies. Hysterical voices, hopeless voices asking for help.

Then he hears nothing for an hour. Six hours. A day.

He turns the dial slowly, hoping to hear another living person.

In the darkness, a voice asks, “Is anyone out there?”

He grabs the mic. “I’m here.”

Sherlock startles, then collects himself. “Where are you?”

“Antarctica,” the voice replies. “I’m at a research station. How about you?”

“Look up,” he says. “I’m passing over you right now.”

He hears nothing for several minutes. Then, “I don’t hear a plane.”

“I’m in space.”

There is silence, and he fears that his solitary companion has lost contact.

“You’re in the Space Station?”

He chuckles. “It appears we’re both stranded.”

“What’s your name?” the voice from Antarctica asks. British, he thinks.

“Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes.”

“I’m John Watson.”

“Are you alone, John?” It seems silly to be formal with a person who might be as alone as he is.

“I am. My two team mates died of the virus. Or whatever this is. Have you heard anything?”

“There is a suspicion that it’s a terrorist bio-weapon. Obviously, the terrorists did not anticipate killing everyone.”

“That’s scary,” says John. “But totally possible. I’m a doctor.”

“My brother is in the government. He told me it was man-made and I don’t doubt it.”

“Am I going to lose contact with you when you’re on the other side of the world?”

“The relay satellites are still operating. We should be all right.”

Already, Sherlock feels like he needs to keep John on the phone.

They talk daily. John finds it’s something he looks forwards to. No, he is drawn to that voice as if it’s a source of heat. He waits for it each day, the way he waits for the supply plane every few months, bringing him the means to live another day. There won’t be a plane, he knows. All he has is Sherlock.

“Where are you from?” he asks.

“I have a flat in London, but grew up in Kent. And you— you have a north country accent, so I would say Northumberland.”

“Very good. I grew up there, near Hexham. My family is in London, though.”

“I’m with King’s College,” Sherlock says.

He has a very public school accent, John thinks. “It’s nice to hear a voice from home. Our project is through the University of Sydney, so I listen to a lot of Australians.”

“I can tell. It’s rubbing off on you, a bit.”

John laughs. “Ugh. I suppose it was inevitable. I’ve been here over a year now. How long have you been up there?”

“Four months.”

“Why are you all alone? I thought the Space Station had a larger crew.”

“I’m not on the ISS. This one was built by the Chinese. It was designed for two, but this time they just sent me.”

“So you’ve been alone for four months. That must be hard.”

“Not really. I have plenty to do, and I’m not a very social person.”

Sherlock has a very direct way of delivering information. John guesses that he is the kind of person who actually would not feel lonely in space because he doesn’t really need people to talk to.

“Do you think they’ll bring you down? I mean, as soon as the pandemic resolves?”

“I suppose.”

“I’m waiting,” he tells Sherlock. “I think it’s going to be a while, though. I haven’t heard from them in three days.”

Sherlock hums. “Nor have I. I am not hopeful.”

“Well, I’ve got a few months of supplies, if I stretch it. Winter’s coming on soon. Ordinarily they’d send a supply plane soon, but…”

“Yes, my supplies are also limited.”

“Do you talk to the ISS? Are they still…”

“They stopped transmitting two days ago. The last report I heard said that they were all ill. They’d just had a crew exchange, I believe. No doubt someone brought the contagion aboard.”

“Well, then. I guess it’s just you and me, Sherlock.”

Because he has irregular hours, Sherlock waits for John to contact him. He can tell that John is a man who keeps a routine, getting up, eating meals, going to sleep all scheduled around clock time. Antarctica has more darkness than light now, as the Southern Hemisphere enters winter.

He finds himself waiting for John to wake up each day. Hearing his voice loosens something in his gut. It’s not loneliness that he feels now, he thinks. He supposes it’s that he has gotten used to John— his voice, his little stories, and the way he listens to Sherlock talk about things that make most people’s eyes glaze over.

He tells him about his experiments and John listens, not the way people listen at cocktail parties and conferences, just to be polite. He asks questions, actually seems interested.

They no longer talk about supplies. Or dying.

“What’s the first thing you want to do when you get back?” John asks him. It’s a ridiculously hopeful thing to think about now. There’s no point in thinking about what will probably not happen. Rescue isn’t entirely impossible at this point, but quite improbable.

“I want to take a shower,” Sherlock says. “How about you?”

“A proper cuppa. The Australians keep sending us Lipton.”

“Mm. Dreadful stuff. I have to drink my tea from a sealed bag, through a straw.”

“I could murder for a shower, too,” John says. “I’m trying to save fuel, not heating water for bathing. Lucky there’s no one to complain if I’m a bit rank.”

“I could complain if it makes you feel better.” Sherlock wasn’t sure why he said this. He didn’t usually have conversations like this one. He wished he could see John’s face, to know if he was smiling. He hears a soft chuckle, and knows his little joke was appreciated.

“Is anyone waiting for you?”

“I have a brother in London. My mother just died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. How about you? You said you had family in London.”

“My wife and daughter moved there after I came here. Her mother lives in Hampstead and needed some help. She has a hip, you know, arthritis.”

He doesn’t need to ask if John thinks he will see them again. They can pretend they are going back to these people, but it is likely that they’ve all succumbed to the virus. It’s actually pointless to talk about their lives as if they are going back to them.

Pointless or not, he waits each morning for John’s call, talks to him throughout the day, says good night to him each evening. And each time he hears his voice, he feels as if life still has meaning.

John is tired today. His main generator is working well, but the backup is inoperable, it seems. He spends some time trying to fix it, finally determines that it needs a part. If Ken were here, he could improvise something. John is not a mechanic. He’d followed their established protocols, testing out the machines that keep him alive, and today the backup had failed. He looks at the main generator, willing it to keep on for a few months more, until the flu is over, and whoever has survived can rescue him.

Since all of that seems unlikely to happen, he shouldn’t care. What does he have to live for now? Only Sherlock will know if something happens to him, and they are… friends, he supposes. Would Sherlock care if he died?

He thinks about Mary, his wife, and Rosie, his four-year-old daughter. He doesn’t know if they are dead, though it’s likely they are. It doesn’t make him feel tearful. An apocalypse of this scale sort of sucks the grief out of a person. How can he grieve for everyone, everything that he’s ever known? It’s like trying to imagine the size of the universe. Putting it in a perspective he can understand is not possible.

The radio crackles. “John!”

“Hi, Sherlock. What’s up?”

This is their daily joke. He asks _what’s up?_ And Sherlock says _me._

“It’s five minutes after eight. You didn’t call as usual, and I thought…”

John can hear his voice shaking, his breath quick and panicky.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “My backup generator died. I was just trying to decide if I can fix it.”

“Oh.” Sherlock sounds calmer. “That’s unfortunate.”

“The main generator seems all right, so it should be fine.”

“You’re all right, then?”

“Yep. Just thinking about breakfast. I’d like a full English this morning, I think. Minus the sausages, bacon, toast, tomato, and black pudding. Just beans and reconstituted eggs.”

“I’m having eggs as well. And chocolate pudding, not black pudding.”

“Sounds delightful. How are your experiments?”

“The plants are a bit wilted. I’m rationing my water. The amount of nutrition they can provide at this point is less valuable than the water I would use to keep them alive.”

“Sounds a bit heartless, cutting them off,” John says. “I used to have a garden.”

Sherlock is quiet for a moment. “I’ve always wanted to keep bees.”

It’s the day when John’s supply plane was scheduled to arrive at his station. Sherlock can hear the disappointment in his voice when they talk.

“I was hoping… you know, that my mates… their bodies are just lying in the shed, frozen. Hardly seems dignified.”

Sherlock doesn’t know what to say to this.

“I’m never going to see people again,” John says.

“Do you miss your wife?”

He laughs. “We’ve been married five years. Most of that time, I’ve been away. She gets on all right without me, I suppose. My little girl I miss a lot. I have pictures of them.”

Sherlock didn’t bother bringing any pictures with him. He hadn’t even thought about it until this moment. He knows what his brother and his mother looked like, and there really wasn’t anyone else.

“Is there someone you miss?” John asks him. “I mean, do you have a girlfriend?”

“Not really my area.”

“Boyfriend?”

“No. I’ve always been more or less married to my work. No time for… that.”

“You’ve never been in love?”

Sherlock knows the answer to this, and understands that John will pity him. “Once. But it wasn’t reciprocated. He didn’t… It was quite… unpleasant.” He doesn’t know why he tells this; it just seems right to be honest now that conversation is a limited commodity.

“I’m sorry,” John says. “That’s hard, being rejected.”

“You’ve been in love,” he says, eager to get the focus off himself.

“Once,” John replies.

“What’s it like?”

“Mary was a very practical woman. We were never romantic, not like you’d think. I loved her, but I can’t say I was in love with her, if that makes sense.”

“You said you’d been in love, though. Did you mean with someone else?”

“Yes. I was already married when it happened. It was a colleague. We just— I can’t explain it. I hadn’t ever really felt that before, not with Mary. I wished… but we had a baby on the way, and I felt like a heel for wanting to leave. Not good to walk out on your expectant wife.”

“This woman… what was she like?”

John chuckles. “Not a woman. I fell in love with a man.”

“You’re… gay?”

“I suppose I’m bisexual. I’d only dated women, though. It was the thing to do, to fit in. I assumed that my attraction to men was just youth and hormones, and that if I settled down with a woman I’d get over it. But then I met James, and I realised that I’d been fooling myself. He was brilliant, and talented, and funny. We spent more and more time together, to the point where Mary became suspicious. It was a big mess when she found out.”

“You were happy. I can hear it in your voice when you talk about him.”

“Yeah, it didn’t turn out well, but I wouldn’t trade those memories for anything.”

Sherlock thinks about Victor. He can't call him an ex-boyfriend because it never consisted of anything more than his own feelings. Certainly not an ex-lover. If he’d gone on to meet someone else afterwards, he might have gotten over the humiliation of it all, but he hadn’t let that happen.

“I wish I knew that that was like,” he tells John.

Sometimes John thinks about walking out into the vast white expanse, turning his back on his little station hut. The sun is never visible now, though it comes close enough to the horizon that there is twilight for several hours. Soon the weeks of total darkness will begin. He thinks about going to sleep in the snow, not waking up.

And he thinks about Sherlock, going around and around the Earth, having summer, winter, day and night every ninety minutes. He wants to talk to him.

“Good morning, sunshine,” he says.

“Hello, John. There is no morning in space. The sun is always shining, though it temporarily disappears when the Earth comes between.”

He laughs. Sherlock sounds less awkward now that they’ve been talking for days. He makes jokes now and laughs at things John says.

“Well, it’s morning here, by the clock at least.” He hesitates, then decides to say what is on his mind. “Sherlock, I thought about what you said last night.”

“Which thing? I believe we touched on a number of topics.”

“About being in love. You wished you’d known what it was like, having that reciprocated.”

“I’ve obviously managed without, John. I have regrets, but it doesn’t mean I’m unhappy.”

“I know. It’s just— a person can exist without love, but it’s something important. We’re going to die, Sherlock, sooner than we’d hoped or planned—” his voice breaks. “I want you to have that.”

“How?”

“We’ve known one another for a while now. I’d like us to fall in love.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2: Together


	2. Together

Sherlock stares at the control panel for a solid minute. Perhaps he’d misheard. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that last bit. What did you say?”

“I want us to fall in love,” John repeats. “I feel like it’s something we should do.”

“John, you can’t just… decide to fall in love with someone.”

“I understand that some chemistry is necessary, but a lot of it is familiarity. I want to try. Just see what happens.”

“An experiment?”

“If you like.”

“I’m not sure how to begin,” Sherlock says. “Obviously, I lack experience.”

“But you’re not opposed to trying?”

It’s true that they are both going to die. Probably soon. All that is left is just maintaining existence until they run out of water, food, heat, or air. Boring. As far as the transport is concerned, he’s been in maintenance mode for years, putting his energies into research. Now, there isn’t much to do besides watching the plants die. He’s fairly sure that playacting a romance with John will be pointless, but it won’t be boring.

And he genuinely likes John. This surprises him. He’s spent his life keeping people at arm’s length, even his own family. He doesn’t do relationships. Now, though, he looks forward to talking with John. He trusts him in a way he’s never trusted anyone.

And he remembers the last thing Victor said to him, after Sherlock’s humiliating declaration of love: _I wouldn’t consider you— not if you were the last man on Earth_.

John, possibly the last man on Earth, wants to love him. He makes his decision.

“If you are willing to take the lead, I will allow myself to be led.”

“Good. We can start there. What do you look like?”

“Me?”

John laughs. “Who else is here? Look, I want you to describe yourself because that’s what people think about when they meet someone. That’s where attraction begins. And I won’t know if you’re telling me the truth unless you turn on your video.”

“I’m not especially attractive,” he says. “I’m rather long and stringy.”

“That’s fine. I’m rather short. Blond. A bit thin now, though I used to be quite muscular.”

“You were in the army.”

“How do you—? Never mind. Just turn on the video from your end. Mine’s been on all along.”

“Why didn’t you ask before?”

“You seem like a private person. But now that we’re dating, I think you should open up a bit.”

“Dating?”

“Our first date. You’re sitting at a table in an Italian restaurant, waiting for me, your blind date. You are expecting some tall, handsome fellow with bedroom eyes, and instead in walks me, John Watson, a small bloke with terrible bedhead and a scruffy beard. A knackered-with-weary-old-eyes kind of guy. I smell like I haven’t seen soap and water for weeks, and my breath stinks. And I see you, Sherlock Holmes. I’m stunned, completely dazzled by your… your…?”

He snorts. “Frizzy hair, long chin, and shifty eyes.”

“Let’s see then. We sound perfect for one another.”

Wincing a bit, he switches the video feed on. “Well? What do you think?”

They stare at one another for a long moment. John is as he’d described himself, small, blond and scruffy. He is smiling broadly. “I’m dazzled. Am I dazzling you as well?” He raises his eyebrows, wags them a bit flirtatiously.

“You are.” He smiles back, wondering if John finds him strange-looking. People usually do. “You look very nice. Handsome.”

“At least you’ve shaved,” John replies. “You have a nice face. Beautiful eyes. And cheekbones.”

Sherlock suddenly feels shy, being looked at like this. “I like your beard. Your eyes are dark, but I can’t really tell what colour they are.”

“Mostly blue, but not like yours. Yours are like opals. Gorgeous. How did I get so lucky?”

“I’m the lucky one, John. I find you very attractive.”

“That’s very sweet. Now, let’s look at the menu. What would you like?”

“Menu?”

“We’re in a restaurant. It’s called Angelo’s, and you’ve picked it because you know the owner. You’re old friends because…” John frowns, looking about for inspiration.

“I got him off a murder rap,” Sherlock suggests.

“Really?”

“Yes. He was breaking into a house at the time. Unshakeable alibi.”

“Well, then, That’s lovely. Angelo is now bringing a candle over to our table. He hands you the wine list because I look like I know nothing about wine. And he’s right.”

“It’s a bit early for dinner. I just ate chocolate pudding.”

“We’re not actually going to eat, Sherlock. This is just part of getting to know one another. You go out on a date, see what your date orders, and decide what that means.”

“Ah. We deduce one another from our food preferences. I already know what you want.”

“Am I so transparent? Or are you that good at deducing me?”

“Both. You’re having the lasagna. You prefer drinking beer, but you will drink the Pinot Noir that I order.”

“Brilliant. Now, what are you having? I think you might like the chicken parmesan.”

“Sorry. Ravioli.”

John rubs his jaw thoughtfully. “Why ravioli, I wonder?”

“Think about it, John.”

“Is it round or square ravioli?”

“It’s round, of course. It doesn’t come out of a can, you know. Angelo actually makes it himself. Family recipe.”

“Funny. I had you pegged as a square ravioli bloke. You like things geometric, fitting together. You can’t make a grid with round ravioli.”

John has a lovely smile, he decides.

He laughs. “I used to do that with food when I was a child. I have matured, though, and can now eat things that don’t fit in a grid.”

“Good to know. Are we having dessert?”

“Have we already eaten? Aren’t we supposed to have awkward conversation while we try to eat without getting sauce on our ties?”

“Am I wearing a tie?” John looks down at himself, confused. “With an anorak?”

“Yes, one that matches your eyes. I’m not wearing a tie, but I have a nice suit, grey. And I’m wearing an aubergine shirt.”

“Ah, not a tie-kind-of-guy, then?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Well, that suit makes you look delectable. And the shirt— rather sexy. Are you certain you won’t pop a button if you eat dessert? I’m restraining myself with difficulty now.”

“Just so you know, I’m not the kind who kisses on the first date.”

“Fine. I won’t push. Remember, though, I’m leading here. And I will pick up the check.”

“That is expected, since you did the asking. I’d like tiramisu for dessert.”

“Coffee?”

“Of course. Two sugars.”

They are almost always talking now. John’s generator seems to be chugging along well enough. Now that they are using a video feed, he can show Sherlock his living quarters and supply room. “Welcome to my home,” he says.

He sees Sherlock floating in his home in space and wonders what it would be like to be weightless. Here in John’s little station hut, everything is frozen, solid, hard, and heavy. Just lifting his feet takes too much energy some mornings.

Sometimes he imagines that Sherlock is just in the next room, talking to him through the doorway. As he lies in his small bunk, talking to Sherlock, he imagines them lying together. He does not imagine being in love with Sherlock; he already is.

When he suggested the romance, he had every intention of giving Sherlock his complete adoration, but wasn’t sure whether Sherlock would play along. He is a man who seems out of his depth in matters of the heart, probably because of his one unhappy experience.

He wants Sherlock to be happy, for him to have a memory of being loved completely. He doesn’t have to play-act to do that.

“What would you have been if you hadn’t become a scientist?”

Sherlock gives him a small smile. “When I was a child, I wanted to be a pirate.”

“I wanted to be an astronaut,” John says, grinning. “Dating one is even better, though. Did you go to uni for pirating? Do they have scholarships for that?”

“Pirates can pay their own way. They have booty.”

“_You_ have booty,” John says suggestively. “But you didn’t enrol in a pirating program, did you?”

“No, chemistry. But when I was at uni, I met a police detective. Actually, I helped him solve a crime. And I thought how interesting it would be to do nothing but solve mysteries all day. That detective— Lestrade was his name— he said I had talent, that he would let me help on cases if I was willing. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I’d accepted his offer.”

“Why didn’t you?”

He shrugs. “My brother discouraged me, said I was wasting my talents. I had a scholarship, you know. Quite a prestigious one. So I stuck with science.”

“Still plenty of mysteries to solve,” John says. “And you obviously have a talent for deduction.”

“How did a medical doctor end up at an antarctic research station?”

“I wanted to be an epidemiologist once,” he says. “Ironic, isn’t it? The last man on Earth is a doctor who studied killer viruses. After I got my medical degree, I went to Greenland with a team of researchers, looking for frozen corpses, hoping to learn more about the 1918 influenza. Digging up corpses wasn’t so much fun, but I liked the environment. I was offered my current position through a friend. At the time I was working in a clinic, but not happy. This offer stirred my sense of adventure. Mary wasn’t keen on it, but she knew I was chafing to do something new, and agreed to let me take a two-year stint.”

“Tell me about Afghanistan.”

John rubs his scar. It’s long healed, but the cold doesn’t do him any favours. “I was there three years. It was a way to pay for school, but I think I would have gone anyway. I guess I’m sort of a danger junkie. Don’t like to play it too safe. Kind of crazy, now that I think about it.”

“Says the man who moved to Antarctica.”

“Yeah, I guess it’s obvious. War isn’t an adventure, though.” He shakes his head. “I got shot in the shoulder. Nerve damage, ended my surgical career. Almost died, then almost died again from the infection. When I got home, I just wanted to move on, get a life. Mary and I had been dating since uni. I asked her, and she accepted.” He huffed a small laugh. “Now that I think about it, that probably wasn’t the best time to make a decision like that, when I’d almost died.”

“Can I see your scar?” Sherlock asks. “I mean, now that we’re dating.”

“Sure.” He begins pulling off his anorak. “I was embarrassed of it for a long time. Now, it seems like the least important thing I’ve ever worried about.” The jumper comes off, and a thermal shirt, and a vest. He adjusts the camera so that Sherlock can see it better. “Attractive, innit?” He turns, showing his back, where the bullet entered, then turns back to show the ugly place where the bullet tore out of his body, leaving ruined flesh and damaged bone behind.

Sherlock leans towards the monitor, his face transfixed. “Beautiful.”

He’s not being ironic, John realises. “Sherlock, do you ever think about what happens when we die?”

Sherlock studies the pink explosion of flesh, raises his finger as if to touch it. This almost killed John. If he had been a few millimetres either way, it might have nicked an artery, and John would have bled out in the desert. He would not be in Antarctica, talking to a man in outer space. Instead, Sherlockmight have been alone, listening for radio transmissions, tending his plants, and rationing his food.

“You almost died,” he says. “Some people have experiences when that happens. Do you remember anything?”

“At first, I only felt pain. Things began to speed up, then everything seemed distant. I didn’t feel like I was floating above my body or anything. I felt like I was leaving, going somewhere.”

“Were you afraid?”

John shakes his head. “No, I wasn’t. I felt… happy. Is that strange? I don’t know, maybe they were giving me morphine by then. Hard not to feel happy when you’re on morphine. What do you think? Will we go somewhere when we die? Or is it just...”

“I hate to theorise without evidence,” Sherlock replies. “I don’t believe that the dead haunt the living. And what we call consciousness, what people think of their essence, the thing that makes us each who we are, these things are just chemicals and electrical impulses, all of which stop when death occurs. The fact that most of us imagine some kind of afterlife may simply be wishful thinking. Or it may be some sort of subconscious recognition that we are part of something larger than what we can see.”

John nods. “The brain isn’t perfectly understood. We can say, for example, that love is just hormones and the species imperative to procreate, but if that were all there was to it, why would infertile couples stay together? Why are some people gay? Why do people continue loving one another long after their ability to procreate has ended?”

“Why did you not stay with James?” This is something he has been wondering about, ever since John told him. “I know you felt guilty, but if love is so important, it would have been justifiable.”

“It’s a bit hard to explain,” John says. “Love is important, but my obligation to Mary and my daughter was also important. It felt selfish to think of leaving them because I loved another. Maybe I feel differently now. Why did you never look for love after being rejected?”

“I assumed that no one would ever love me, and it seemed prudent to avoid that situation again. Too painful.”

“As a scientist, though, you would never accept one piece of evidence as conclusive.”

“I had no curiosity to find out if someone else might love me.”

They are silent, each lost in their own thoughts for a while.

John looks up, smiling. “Let’s dance.”

John knows he is not the greatest dancer. He has rhythm, but no coordination. At his own wedding, he was terrified of stepping on Mary’s feet. Here, miles away from his partner, that is not the problem.

“Dancing together is a romantic ritual,” he explains.

“Romance is pheromones,” says Sherlock. “I believe it’s traditional to touch your partner when the music is slow. The release of pheromones in response to physical contact is well-documented.”

John giggles. “Yeah, I know. You’re just going to have to imagine how bad I smell and how many times I stomp your feet.”

“Well, it’s far easier to dance when your feet can touch the ground, John Watson.” Sherlock does a slow-motion flip. “I am, in fact, a good dancer, but in space, it just looks like flailing.”

The song John chooses is a slow dance, an easy two-step. It’s familiar to Sherlock, recalling a childhood memory of his parents dancing to an old LP.

_There are places I'll remember_

_All my life, though some have changed_

_Some forever, not for better_

_Some have gone, and some remain_

_All these places had their moments_

_With lovers and friends, I still can recall_

_Some are dead, and some are living_

_In my life, I've loved them all…_

He closes his eyes and imagines them in a darkened room, swaying together. He imagines Sherlock is wearing a suit and smells like expensive, musky cologne. He lays the back of his glove against his cheek, pretending that it’s Sherlock’s chest, that his arms are around him as they sway together.

Sherlock floats in space, his arms around imaginary John. He remembers the dance lessons his mother forced on him and Mycroft, so they would be prepared for whatever social occasions demanded it. Those were dances in a box, stepping while carefully holding his partner at arm’s length. This kind of dancing he has never done. He used to watch couples swaying like this, thinking that it couldn’t really be called dancing if they only stepping back and forth.

And he wishes he really could feel and smell John. He knows from seeing him that he would only come up to Sherlock’s shoulder, that his blond hair might tickle his chin. He knows what John’s body would feel like, compact and strong and warm.

_…But of all these friends and lovers_

_There is no one compares with you_

_And these memories lose their meaning_

_When I think of love as something new_

_…In my life, I'll love you more…_

“I love you, John,” he says.

“I don’t want to sleep. I’m afraid.”

John doesn’t need to ask what Sherlock is afraid of. It’s the same thing he fears, waking up and not hearing the other’s voice. Eventually, it will happen.

“Do you know what I once wanted to be?” he asks Sherlock.

“Tell me.”

“I wanted to be a writer.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Same as you, I didn’t think it was practical, and my mum was set on me being a doctor. I didn’t want to disappoint people.”

“There are doctors who write, you know.”

“I know. I just didn’t think I could make a go of it. It seemed safer to do something I knew I could do.”

“What would you write about?”

“I’ve always loved mystery novels. Maybe I’d write medical mysteries. But there would have to be action, too. Like Dr House meets James Bond.”

“I’m not familiar with those people.”

“You don’t know who James Bond is?”

“Is he a scientist?”

“He’s a spy, a character in a series of novels. There are movies, too. And Dr House was a doctor on the telly, a diagnostician who solves cases nobody else can solve.”

Sherlock is giving him a blank look. John laughs.

It took Sherlock a long time to get used to sleeping in zero gravity. There is the mechanical hum of the ship, but otherwise silence. It can be as dark as he wants; the lights are activated by verbal command, in Chinese, of course. He’s never been a regular sleeper. Even as a child, he sometimes got up at night and wandered around the house, reading books or playing with his chemistry set. That’s how he uses his time aboard the station, working or reading when he doesn’t feel like sleeping, and sleeping whenever he can’t keep his eyes open.

Now he tries to sleep while John is asleep. This way he can maximise their time together, the hours that they spend in conversation. The problem is not so much falling asleep now. It’s the fear of waking up. He might go to sleep with John’s voice in his ear, but he could wake up to silence.

When he can’t sleep, he looks out his window. The earth is dark now. He can see a few bits of light in major cities, but there is no live radio activity, just recorded messages. Soon the lights will go off, as electrical grids shut down. The buildings will remain, but gradually other life forms will take over, reshaping the land for their own purposes. Pollution will disappear and the bees will come back. Trees will break up the highways, herds of beasts will roam the cities, and flocks of birds will make their homes in skyscrapers. It won’t take long.

He wonders what has happened to his brain. He loves John, and wouldn’t give that up, but he is amazed at what love has done to him.

_To hell with science_, he thinks. If only he had known sooner what it was like to feel loved. But then it might have been someone else, not John.

He doesn’t regret.

“Every culture has some idea about an afterlife,” John says.

He watches as Sherlock contemplates his dying vegetables, soon to be dead. “This is true.”

“There’s no way to prove it, of course.”

“Agreed.”

“But it could be true. People could live on, in some form. Even just memory.”

“Sometimes,” Sherlock says, “I think of the unknown as the 99%. What we know, though to us it seems vast, is really just a tiny percentage of all knowledge. In fact, it’s less than that. The unknown is infinity, and the known is infinitesimally small.”

For a few minutes they don’t speak. John is staring at his wall, the one with the map of the world tacked to it. He imagines all the lines and words fading until it’s just green and brown and white, forests and deserts and ice. Learning geography may not have been a complete waste of time, he thinks, but now it’s irrelevant.

“If the afterlife is part of our minds,” he says. “I want to imagine it. With you.”

Sherlock hums. “An experiment. If we are wrong, we’re no worse off.”

“Exactly.”

“How shall we begin?”

“We’ll talk about what we want to be there, and describe it so we can imagine it. But before we do that, we need to have sex.”

Sherlock drops a test tube. It does not shatter, naturally, but simply floats away from him. “Sex?”

John is trying to explain this to him. “You’ve never heard of phone sex?”

“I… I suppose I deleted it, since it had no relevance at the time. What you’re suggesting is that we… touch ourselves while… describing what we are hypothetically doing?”

“That about sums it up.”

Once, Sherlock might have found the idea of _phone sex_ somewhat seamy, even shameful. Now he doesn’t care. If an alien culture should one day arrive at Earth and access video footage of him and John pleasuring themselves, perhaps it will give them some misguided idea about how humans mated. Or why they became extinct. He finds this funny, and definitely worth any amount of embarrassment.

“Lead on, my dear doctor.”

The first step, John explains, is to find a comfortable position. Since Sherlock is floating in zero G, all positions are equally comfortable.

John next suggests that they both disrobe, with the proviso that his small shelter is _really fucking cold_ and he might need a blanket to keep certain parts from getting frostbitten.

Sherlock tells his space station to raise the temperature by two degrees Fahrenheit and dim the lights. He removes his jumpsuit and undergarments and awaits further instructions.

John is struggling with a blanket, shivering and cursing at the same time. “F-f-fuck,” he says. Once he has wrestled his shirt and trousers off, he looks up and sees Sherlock.

“My God,” he says. “Look at you— you’re gorgeous, Sherlock. Has no one ever told you that before?”

“Never.”

Sherlock’s body is saying _yes,_ while his mind is saying, _wait._ He thought that being miles apart would make this easier, but he would give anything right now to feel John’s skin, to feel his heart beating, and to press their skin together.

John pulls his blanket back, revealing his erect penis. Sherlock has seen a penis or two before, but this one is John’s. “I wish I could touch you,” he says.

“Imagine that you are,” John says. “And I’ll imagine I’m touching you.” He grins. “And please imagine that I smell good.”

All of Sherlock’s fears— being laughed at, ridiculed, taken advantage of— vanish. He loves, and he is loved.

“I’m touching your dick,” John says. He is watching Sherlock touch himself. “I want you to feel so good.”

Sherlock smiles at his use of the word _dick._ Coming from a doctor, it sounds like a ten year old saying his first dirty word. “I’m touching you as well. You’re so big. I love how you feel in my hand.”

“God, your arse. I could write sonnets about it.”

“Maybe later, John. Right now you need to kiss me.”

He perceives that John may have had sex with multiple partners, but he has never done this before. They proceed tentatively, awkwardly, uncertain how to do this. He closes his eyes as John describes kissing him. As his own cock leaks, he imagines John’s cock leaking, twitching in his hand.

He sees them floating together in space. They are like a yin-yang, John’s mouth on his cock, his mouth taking John’s. There is no up or down, no yours or mine. The earth looms below.

“I love you so much,” John says.

He gasps. “God, I love you.”

They don’t last long. John comes, crying Sherlock’s name, and he follows, moaning, _John, John…_

He can hear John breathing, sees him collapsed under the blanket.

_You’re the only person I’ve ever really loved, _he thinks. _In my entire life, there has never been anyone I could love more._

They fall asleep, whispering to one another.

“London would be nice.” John is looking at his supplies, counting days. It’s time to prepare themselves.

“I think you’d like my flat. But London is busy.”

“True. Problem?”

“More to imagine, John. If we’re going to imagine this place, we need to start with something simple.”

“So, something small.”

“Whatever we imagine, it will expand.” He describes a place in Sussex, a small house, a cottage, really. “What do you think?”

John's first thought is that he would be content in hut in Antarctica, if Sherlock were with him. “Does it have a garden?”

“Yes, and there are orchards nearby. Apples, plums, pears, even cherries.”

“Your bees like that.”

They talk in present tense, no hypotheticals, fixing each detail into a real, geographic place in their brains.

“I can hear thunder,” John says.

“It’s waves,” Sherlock replies. “They crash against the cliffs. Sounds like thunder. Miles away, but we can still hear it.”

John closes his eyes and inhales, smelling the warm soil. _Tomatoes_, he thinks. _We can make sauce._

Later, they will follow a narrow path down to the strip of beach and walk. The waves, drawn by the gravity of the moon, push in and pull away.

In his mind, Sherlock has built the cottage, the gardens, the orchards. He knows all about bees because he has read about them. He knows what kind of hives he should have, how many, and how he should space them.

“There are books,” he tells John. “In our sitting room, we have bookcases full of them.”

“I should hope so. I can’t imagine living in a house without books.”

“And you can write. You have a desk. It’s a small desk, so you can use it when we’re sitting by the fire.”

“What will I write about?” John turns towards the camera now. Sherlock has been watching him organise his storage room. Food is not the problem, he can see. One person eats much less than three, the number of occupants supplies were laid in for. It’s the fuel. John has turned the heat down, goes around his shelter dressed in layers. Still, he shivers.

“Mysteries. Spy meets telly doctor. And you can write up our cases. We’ve spent years solving crimes.”

“Which case was the most interesting, do you think?”

Sherlock tells him about the taxi driver, the suicides that weren’t suicides. That was the first one they solved together, John reminds him. “What was the name of the boy who drowned? That was your first case, before we met, wasn’t it?”

They tell each other the stories, reminding each other of the details, plucked from their own lives. They remember days and nights, running down allies and across rooftops. The moment they knew. Their first kiss.

“I cried when you said you loved me,” Sherlock says. “I wish we hadn’t waited so long.”

John smiles. “Now we have all the time in the world, love.”

And there are so many evenings, sitting before the fire. Two chairs, facing, mugs full of hot tea, sweetened by honey. A skull on the mantel, experiments in progress on the table, shelves full of books.

It gets cool in Sussex in the evenings, even in summer. They snuggle into the bed then, and they touch, and they smell, and they taste. At night, the bees do not hum, but they can hear distant surf pounding the cliffs.

John goes out of his shelter when it’s not too cold, but only for a few minutes. He looks up at the sky, and sometimes sees a tiny moving star. Maybe it’s a satellite, or maybe it’s a space station. It’s a worry, these manmade things orbiting overhead. One day, their orbits will decay and they will burn through the atmosphere, their debris falling into the oceans.

“How long will the communication satellites keep working?” he asks Sherlock.

Sherlock nods; clearly he thinks about these things, too. “Their orbit is high enough, they don’t experience much decay. Most will keep transmitting for years. It will be fine.”

John feels reassured. They don’t need years. A few weeks are all they need.

Sherlock looks out of his window. He’s passing over Europe now, and sees England below him. It’s been a few weeks since he saw any lights in London. Europe is dark, too.

He thinks of Sussex, the sun coming up, the bees going out from the hives into the orchard. He can water running, dishes and cutlery clinking. John is in the kitchen, making breakfast for them. He’s singing. _There is no one compares with you…_

John eats his last breakfast, powdered eggs with dehydrated bacon bits. His fuel will last an hour or two more, he’s calculated. He tidies up his living space, washes out the dishes and puts them away. There is no reason to leave his hut neat, but it’s habit. He gives a final look around, then he puts on his warmest jumper and contacts Sherlock.

“Are you ready?”

Sherlock looks nervous, but he nods. He’s wearing his space suit and helmet.

It’s the very shortest day of the year, no day at all. It will be dark for weeks more, but John won’t be here to see it. He’ll be gone. Where he goes, it will be warm.

He attaches his radio so he’ll be able to hear Sherlock and talk to him. Sherlock is looking at him through the glass of his helmet.

“Have you decompressed?”

He can see Sherlock nodding. “I have.”

“You don’t have to do this yet,” says John. “You’ve got a few weeks more of food and air. You don’t have to do this for me.”

“I want to.” Sherlock smiles. “I love you, and I don’t want to miss you.”

“I love you, too,” John says. “Let’s go for a walk.”

Sherlock makes sure his helmet is fastened and his com working before he steps into the airlock. He has thought about this many times since the world started to go dark, knows exactly what to do. He looks over his work space, his home for the last months, and says goodbye.

“I’m in the airlock,” he tells John. “I’ll be passing over you in a few minutes.”

John replies, “I’m outside now.”

Sherlock closes the airlock and opens the exit door. “John?”

“Still here.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Thank you, John. For everything.”

“I know, Sherlock.” He’s breathing heavily. “I’m walking now.”

Sherlock sees Antarctica below him and pushes off from the space station. “I’m free,” he tells John.

Space is entirely different when you’re not seeing it through a window, he thinks. There’s the helmet restricting his peripheral vision, but he can see the earth so clearly, as if he could reach out and touch it.

“This is amazing, John. I can see the aurora australis.”

“So can I. It doesn’t seem to be affecting the radio, though. How much oxygen do you have?”

“Enough. Let me know when you need to rest.”

He sees the continents below him, dark shapes in a black sea. A line from a poem he learned in school drifts through his mind: _…we are here as on a darkling plain…_

John trudges through the darkness. It seems like hours. Or days. Sometimes he has to stop and clear his goggles of ice that collects there, his breath freezing as soon as it touches them. It’s so cold he can barely feel his feet and hands, even though he’s wearing his warmest gear. At the same time, he feels as if he could walk forever. Though his mind knows that there are miles of ice under him that may one day melt, the ground feels solid beneath his feet.

“Sherlock, are you okay?”

“I’m fine, John. Just enjoying the view.”

He thinks about Sherlock floating two hundred miles above him. A romantic gesture, taking a walk together.

He can hear waves in the distance.

The aurora australis is giving a light show over the white continent. Sherlock is surprised how quickly the space station has moved away from him. It’s now a tiny speck in the distance. Other satellites orbit above him. He has a jet pack in case he needs to dodge any space junk, but so far, it’s clear.

“How are you doing, John?”

“I think I need to sit down for a while.” His voice sounds ragged.

“Keep talking to me, all right?”

“Yeah, okay. Tell me about Sussex again.”

“You have a garden.” A bit breathless now, he thinks about what John wants to hear. “And there are bee hives. We plant flowers that the bees like. Soon there will be honey.”

“It’s been so long since I’ve seen a flower.”

“There are so many flowers, John, all different colours and fragrances. And vegetables, too. Maybe strawberries.”

“I know how to make jam,” John says. “My mother used to do that. Best jam you ever tasted.”

“There’s a small village nearby. We walk there once a week for milk and other things. We’ll pick up some bread this week, homemade bread for the jam. And more tea. Tonight, we’ll sit by the fire and you’ll read me what you’ve written.”

“I’m working on the case with the hound,” John says. “Remind me how you solved it.” He sounds sleepy; Sherlock can hear him breathing.

“Baskerville. Yes, that was a good one.” And he tells the story again, imagines John sitting in his chair by the fire, writing it. In a little while, he’ll get up and make John that cuppa he’s been wanting.

John lies in the snow, looking up at the sky. He closes his eyes and hears the surf pounding the cliffs. That’s miles away, though. Here, on their little strip of shore, he can feel the cold waves reaching his toes.

_… The sea is calm tonight._

_The tide is full, the moon lies fair_

_Upon the straits…_

Almost completely numb now, he tries to remember what poem that was. In school, they learned it, he thinks. Or maybe Sherlock told him. He smiles.

He’s on the beach, watching the sunlight reflect off the water.

Sherlock will be done tending the hives soon. Then he will come down to the beach, and they will watch the sun go down together.

Sherlock’soxygen is beginning to run out, going by the gauge. He tries not to breathe too deeply.

“John?”

The reply is a soft susurration of breath.

“Are you cold, John?”

“Warm.” He can barely hear him.

“John— are you still with me?”

“I’m waiting for you, love. Come and walk with me.”

The sea roars, meeting the land in a swirl of sand and pebbles.

It’s warm, he perceives. June, he thinks, or July. He hears the bees humming, smells the flowers. They chose the varieties well. He wonders how the vegetables are coming in.

He finishes fixing the frame he’d noticed needing repair.

John is on the beach, down below, waiting for him.

_…Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,_

_Listen! you hear the grating roar_

_Of pebbles which the waves draw back…_

John smiles. The cliffs are distant. Here it is calm.

To the east, the moon is rising, just as the sun prepares to sink into the western sea.

Soon it will be night, but the sun will rise tomorrow, and every day after. This world lies before them, _a land of dreams, so various, so beautiful, so new_.

He hears Sherlock above, his footsteps clattering down the wooden stairs.

John is standing, looking out over the channel, when Sherlock comes down the stairs to the beach. His blond hair lifts in the breeze. Sherlock walks over the beach cobbles, threading his way down to the sand.

Seeing his lover waiting for him, his heart beats a bit faster. It always does, and he knows this will never end. Love is strong enough to keep uncertainty at bay. Like a tide, it always returns, smoothing the land, making the earth new.

Coming up behind John, he slips his arms around his chest, holding him close. He murmurs in his ear, _I love you. _

_Ah, love, let us be true to one another!_

John turns to him, looking up and smiling. His face seems younger now, touched with the gold of sunset. He is beautiful.

They kiss gently, but with joy, like lovers home at last from separate journeys.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The song is In My Life by Lennon/McCartney, a song both sweet and melancholy, about time, memory, and love.  
The poem is Dover Beach by Matthew Arnold.  
The idea of a bio-weapon added to water and distributed in soft drinks comes from A Brief History of the Dead by Kevin Brockmeier


End file.
